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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24982297">we can't live forever, so we should stick together</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/overcomewithlongingfora_girl/pseuds/overcomewithlongingfora_girl'>overcomewithlongingfora_girl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, But The Happy Ending Takes A While, F/M, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, M/M, Sad Sad Sad Sokka, Slow Burn, Suki Dies Young, Survivor Guilt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 02:00:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>13,350</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24982297</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/overcomewithlongingfora_girl/pseuds/overcomewithlongingfora_girl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The war is over. Everyone is finally happy, and almost safe. Suki's going to spend a few years as Zuko's personal guard, but what's a few years when they have the rest of their lives together? </p><p>Sokka's never thought about how even in the most successful relationships, someone has to leave first.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>204</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>488</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. and fuck all the nostalgia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>16</em>
</p><p>“I don’t miss the war. I do <em>not </em>miss the war, at all. Okay? That’s not what I’m saying.”</p><p>Suki rolls her eyes. “Bu-ut.”</p><p>“Well, but…” Sokka sighs. “Just…there are parts that I’ll miss. Like, traveling with everyone. We’re all going to be separated now. And we’ll have parents telling us what to do again. And we won’t get special treatment for being friends of the Avatar…”</p><p>“And we won’t be together.”</p><p>Sokka heaves a huge, rib-cracking sigh. “Yeah. We won’t be together.”</p><p>For once, they’ve managed to sneak off alone, to a little courtyard off the west wing of the palace. The others have probably noticed their absence, but Sokka can’t bring himself to care. He’s leaving in three days. He, Katara, and Aang are taking off on Appa in just <em>three day’s time. </em>Beneath them, Hakoda, Bato, and the other water tribe warriors will sail beneath. They’re all going home. They’re all finally going home, and they’ll be a family again, the Southern Water Tribe will be whole again.</p><p>But…but what about Toph? What about Zuko? Sokka’s grown fond of Haru, of Teo, even Mai and Ty Lee!</p><p>And Suki. Man, oh man, what about Suki? She’s smiling this wistful smile at him, and Sokka wants to yell, because they’re finally getting some time together without worrying about attacks or ambushes or enemies, and it’s coming to an all too early end. Suki and Sokka have been able to ignore that part until now. They’ve kissed and talked and fumbled clumsily under each other’s clothes, blushing all the while. A few days after they defeated Ozai, they tasted their first sips of sake, and got tipsy and giggly with Zuko and the others. It’s fun and dumb and Sokka just wants to keep <em>doing </em>it – making fun, dumb discoveries with Suki at his side.</p><p>But Gran-Gran is back at the South Pole. All the food he’s missed for so long, and the winter chill, and the traditions. He misses home, badly. Katara does too, and he’s not sending his little sister to the South Pole alone.</p><p>Sometimes Sokka thinks maybe growing up just means that you’re always missing someone, or something.</p><p>Still, it’s worth a try. He draws in a deep breath. “Would you ever consider…”</p><p>“Going to the South Pole with you?” They’ve been lying on their backs side by side, watching the clouds drift by with their heads pillowed by their hands. Now, though, Suki flips onto her stomach to look more directly at Sokka.</p><p>Looking up to meet he eyes, he shrugs. “Yeah. Would you?” The pained look on Suki’s face says it all. “Thought so.” He sighs.</p><p>“It’s just…Sokka, it’s just…” She bites her lip, searching for the words to explain. “For years, all I knew was Kyoshi Island. We grew up there, and trained there, and never left. We were like this…elite security force, but only for the island. There were so many people that needed help. There were so many people we could’ve helped.”</p><p>“Kyoshi Island needed you,” Sokka points out, but Suki shakes her head, frustrated.</p><p>“We…we barely even knew about the war. Kyoshi Island did need us…some of us, but not all of us. If we’d known, if we could’ve really made a choice for ourselves…” Suki shakes her head. “I just feel like there’s so much I could’ve done. And there’s so much I want to do, I think-” She catches herself, takes a deep breath. “I, I think I want to stay here.”</p><p>“In the Fire Nation?”</p><p>“Yeah!” Suki’s face grows animated. “Zuko and Iroh have a lot of work to do if they want to turn things around. It’ll be a thousand times harder with all the Fire Nation warmongers that have been making money and careers out of the fighting.”</p><p>“Dicks,” Sokka mutters, and Suki nods emphatically.</p><p>“Even some of his own generals! And the top advisors – they were all working with Ozai, so Zuko has no idea who to trust. Even Iroh isn’t sure where their loyalties are. There are traitors everywhere just waiting for the right moment. They think Zuko’s weak because he doesn’t want war.”</p><p>“That’s a misjudgment if I’ve ever heard one,” scoffs Sokka.</p><p>“Agreed. But still. I think he could use some friends in town for awhile.”</p><p>Sokka sighs, drawing it out extra-long to make Suki giggle. “That’s very noble of you, oh great Kyoshi warrior.” She punches him lightly in the shoulder, and he grins at her. After a moment, a real sigh breaks through. “I…I’m really going to miss you.”</p><p>“I’m going to miss you too, Sokka.”</p><p>He forces himself to smile. “At least…at least when I come visit Zuko, I’ll see you too. It’ll be a whole reunion, every time.”</p><p>“Yeah!” Sokka’s never going to get used to the way her brown eyes light up when she smiles. Without the dramatic, Kyoshi warrior makeup, she looks so alive and fresh and real. She’s right here, right next to Sokka, at least for right now. No more sadness, he decides firmly, looking at Suki’s bittersweet smile, her fine brown hair billowing about her head, the blue sky and sun and beautiful garden around them. There’s no war, there’s no responsibility, there’s nothing to do for the next three days, except make the most of the time he has with Suki.</p><p>_</p><p>
  <em>18</em>
</p><p>“Why are your <em>pants </em>still on?” Suki growls it playfully into Sokka’s jaw, and he laughs, exhilarated by her smell, her presence, the fact that she’s here again. It’s been a good year for seeing Suki. Sure, it’s only a few weeks all together, spread out across seasons, but Sokka will take it. He’ll take whatever he can get.</p><p>“I’m working on it, babe, trust me,” he mumbles, brushing her hair behind her ear. It falls right back out – she’s cut it short, citing security concerns, but Sokka doesn’t much care <em>why </em>she chopped it. He just knows she looks hot. Tough, no-nonsense, and like she could kick his ass anytime she chooses. Which, to be honest, she probably can. Judging by the impatient eye roll, she’s thinking about it right now, as he shimmies out of his tiger-seal skin leggings.</p><p>Half an hour later, he’s flopping down on the stack of pelts next to Suki, breathless, sticky, dazed. “I fuckin’ missed you,” she murmurs, turning her head to grin at him. Sokka grins back, still panting.</p><p>“I missed fucking you,” he replies cheekily, and she jabs him in the chest with a long, accusing finger.</p><p>“Pig.” She says it as affectionately as a pet name, and Sokka rolls his eyes. Cushioning his head with one arm, he stretches the other out toward Suki, an open invitation, and she happily scoots toward him, resting her head on his bicep and her hand on his chest. Sokka’s heart feels so swollen he thinks it might burst. Tui and La, he’s happy to see her again.</p><p>“Tell me everything,” he insists, and she does.</p><p>“People are really starting to like Zuko. They’re getting on board with his ideas.” Her eyes light up just thinking about it. “Fewer coups, fewer assassination attempts…” Sokka winces, shakes his head to clear it.</p><p>“I’m…I’m still not over the idea that people are trying to assassinate a teenager,” he admits, frowning.</p><p>“I know.” Suki shakes her head. “Don’t worry – he’s got a bunch of other more competent teenagers protecting him. Besides, it really is getting better.”</p><p>“I’m glad to hear it.”</p><p>“He’s just…Sokka, he’s really incredible.” The admiration in Suki’s voice is frank. “He’s a hell of a fighter, but he’s also an unbelievable diplomat. Don’t make that face! It’s seriously impressive.”</p><p>“I know, I know. Just, c’mon, the fighting is so much <em>more</em> impressive.”</p><p>Impatiently, Suki rolls his eyes. “Don’t be such a meathead, Sokka. He has really good ideas, and he’s making really amazing changes in the Fire Nation. It’s…It’s cool to be a part of it.”</p><p>“And I’m sure you’re completely indispensable,” Sokka assures her.</p><p>“We’re a pretty good team.”</p><p>“Hey, do I have to be jealous?”</p><p>“Not until I sprout a dick,” Suki quips, and Sokka bursts out laughing. “Seriously though, I love Zuko.” She smiles fondly as she thinks about him. “I just love him. He’s so good, and he’s working so hard.”</p><p>“I love him too,” Sokka agrees easily, “but whatever you do, don’t tell him that.”</p><p>Lifting an eyebrow, Suki gives him a narrow look. “Why? Some weird masculinity thing?”</p><p>Sokka laughs out loud. “No. Just that he’d be mortified to hear it out loud. You know he would be.”</p><p>“You might be right about that,” Suki admits, rolling her eyes at the thought. There’s a small, contented pause between them. “This is really nice.” Suki traces her fingertips over Sokka’s chest. “This is…really nice.”</p><p>Sokka knows how unlikely it is, but he has to ask. The hope is thrumming in his chest, strong as ever. “Thinking about giving up the bodyguard life?”</p><p>“Not yet.” The answer comes quickly, confidently. “But…I don’t know. Maybe a few years from now…”</p><p>Heart quickening in his chest, Sokka grins, a smile that only broadens as Suki’s trailing fingers dip lower, lower down his stomach. “Who’s the pig now?” he teases, eyebrows rising. “I’m not just a piece of meat, you know.”</p><p>Batting her eyelashes, Suki looks up at him all innocent. “Oh, do you want me to stop?”</p><p>Smirking, Sokka shakes his head. “Nope. No. Let’s do this.”</p><p>_</p><p>
  <em>21</em>
</p><p>The betrothal necklace doesn’t mean right away, Sokka explains, words tripping over themselves on the way out of his mouth. It doesn’t mean <em>tomorrow, </em>or even next week, or hell, even next year! Just that, someday, you know, they could…they could…</p><p>About then, Sokka’s voice gives out, because Suki is still staring at the necklace, not speaking, and Sokka is wondering how he could’ve misread things so badly when she turns and flings her arms around his neck. “Sokka!” Her voice comes out choked, and she has to pull back to swipe the tears from her eyes. “Sokka.”</p><p>This time the smile really is going to split his face in two. The joy in his belly is ferocious, ravenous, overpowering, far too big for his chest. “So – so that’s a yes?”</p><p>“Yes! Yes! Yes!”  Suki crows it, howls it to the indifferent glaciers. “Someday I’m gonna be your wife, you lucky motherfucker.”</p><p>The word almost stops Sokka’s heart. “My wife,” he repeats, smiling like an idiot. “You’re going to be my wife.”</p><p>“<em>Someday,” </em>Suki emphasizes, with tears still running down her beautiful, joyful, smiling face. “Don’t get too excited. I’ll make you wait years. I’ll make you wait decades. I’ll make you follow me around the world and just <em>try </em>to pin me down.”</p><p>Sokka tips his head back and laughs. For the first time, he understands airbending. Right now, he thinks he could lift right off his feet. “Anything,” he swears. It’s sunny out today, and the light off the snow is blinding. That’s why there are tears in his eyes. That’s why. “Anything for you,” he promises recklessly, wholly, unnecessarily. He feels like he can’t even look at her, like the happy is so overpowering it’s going to take him out the knees.</p><p>His wife. She’s going to be his wife. Tui and La, he’d known she’d say yes, but had he really <em>known? </em>He’d known that she was always going to be a part of his life, but now he really knows. He doesn’t know when, or where, or exactly how, but this is it. This is everything. Suki is always, always going to be a part of his life.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. and everything we're scared of</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Oh hey.” Sokka is smiling. This is still what he will think of later as before time. “A letter from Suki and Zuko.”</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: death and grief :(</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Later, Sokka will wonder how he missed the fact that the world had ended. He’ll think something is wrong with him, something is broken in his head or his heart, because the earth didn’t shift beneath his feet, his stomach didn’t turn, he didn’t feel empty. Eventually, he had to accept that the world didn’t work like that. It felt like any other morning because it <em>was </em>like any other morning, for him. He got up, ate breakfast, and went fishing with Hakoda. They got back early, after a lucky early catch. That’s the only reason they’re there when the hawk arrives.</p><p>It’s been so long since there’s been a threat in the Southern Water Tribe that Sokka doesn’t notice the hawk until it’s circling right over them, intermittently blocking out the sun. He and his father have been avidly discussing this new exchange program that they’re thinking about starting with the Northern tribe. The problem is that they just don’t have enough teenagers to actually <em>exchange. </em>They’re discussing the merits of a year here, year there approach, when Sokka finally looks up and catches the glint of red off the bird’s wings.</p><p>“Oh hey.” Sokka is smiling. This is still what he will think of later as <em>before time. </em>“A letter from Suki and Zuko.”</p><p>Obligingly, Hakoda stretches out an arm, and the bird lands. Sokka is still talking when he reaches for the scroll. “You know, I heard Toph was planning on visiting, so maybe-”</p><p>That’s when he sees the black wax seal. A golden seal is standard, from the imperial palace. Red means emergency. Black means bad news.</p><p>Suddenly, Sokka is a passenger in his own body. He watches with distant, detached interest as his fingers fumble with opening the scroll. His eyes scan over the characters, written in unfamiliar, urgent script, but none of them register. It’s a strange feeling – he doesn’t recognize a single one of the words, but he knows what the message says. It’s a body knowledge, a gut knowledge, so by the time his brain realizes what’s happened, he’s already on his knees.</p><p>And he still doesn’t feel a thing. “Sokka! Sokka!” Hakoda’s panicked voice comes from a thousand miles away. “What’s going on?”</p><p>It feels like someone is telling him a story, like he’s watching another’s body move across a stage. <em>Now you are thrusting the scroll into Hakoda’s hands. Now you are looking into his face, you are seeing his worry, you are not speaking. Now you are clearing your throat, a hacking, horrible sound. You are speaking. You are telling him that the imperial palace was attacked. Fire Lord Zuko is critically injured. Commander Suki, of the Kyoshi warriors, is dead. </em></p><p>
  <em>Now you are putting your face in your hands. You feel your mittens on your cheeks. Your mittens are bearskin. They are thick. They are warm. You are crying.</em>
</p><p>_</p><p>The numbness gives way very quickly, very quickly. . Behind it is disbelief. Hakoda guides his dazed, unresponsive son into the place he’s built near the edge of the village, and by the time they’re inside, Sokka is speaking again, frantically, the words tripping over themselves to get out of him faster. “It’s a trap,” Sokka keeps insisting, and every time he says it, it carves a new line into his father’s face. “It’s a trick. They, they’ve, some group of rebels has captured the palace, S-S-S…” He swallows, can’t say it. “They’re in trouble, they need us.”</p><p>“Sokka.”</p><p>He’s moving frantically around their tent, tearing down supplies at random. His sword, a heavy coat, a waterskin. “We’ll use the hawk to send a message to Aang. We’ll get Appa to fly us over. We’ll, whoever it is, Aang can take them, we can take them-”</p><p>“Sokka.”</p><p>“I know it’s convincing! I don’t know how they knew about the wax color. Is that common knowledge? It’s probably common knowledge. The seal. The hawk. It’s detailed. It must be an inside job. One of those old fucking generals. They could be in danger. They must be in danger. We should get going, now, before someone gets-”</p><p>“Sokka!”</p><p>“-before someone gets hurt.” The words leave Sokka’s mouth broken, strained. There’s a horrible, dead silence. In that pause, Sokka takes a deep, deliberate breath. “It could be a mistake, Dad. I know…I know it doesn’t seem likely, but it could be a mistake.”</p><p>“Sokka. That was the second hawk.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“The hawk we intercepted. That was the second one, the official one intended for me and the village.” Hakoda draws in a deep breath. “Gran-Gran caught the first one. It was from Zuko’s Uncle Iroh. For you. It’s…Sokka, it’s no mistake. It’s true.”</p><p>“Oh.” Oh. Sokka pauses, does a quick inventory. Nothing hurts, nothing is broken. The sky isn’t on fire, and the earth isn’t shaking. The sun is still shining cheerfully bright off the snow. “I thought it was funny, you know, because in the letter they called him Fire Lord Zuko, and they said, they said Commander Suki, of the Kyoshi warriors, as if I didn’t-” Sokka’s voice cracks, breaks, warps horribly. “A-as if I didn’t know who m-m-my own fiancée was-”</p><p>Hakoda’s arms wrap around Sokka, and the insane desire to hurt his father, throw him off, scream at him, comes into Sokka’s head. Instead, Sokka opens his mouth and <em>howls. </em>The sound is raw, guttural. It comes from somewhere deep in Sokka’s stomach, and its name is pain.</p><p>_</p><p>By the time Aang and Katara get back, Sokka is already gone. They’ve been up at the North Pole, practicing waterbending and healing with Pakku. They push the flying bison as hard as they can all the way back home, so that poor Appa all but crashes into the ground when they reach the village. Aang stays to soothe the panting beast while Katara runs ahead to the little place Sokka has built for himself on the edge of the village.</p><p>It’s empty. Katara checks Hakoda’s dwelling, and that’s empty too. She finds her father and grandmother in Gran-Gran’s home. Still no Sokka.</p><p>“He’s gone, Katara,” Hakoda says gently, sounding like he’s aged a good ten years in the weeks since she last saw him.</p><p>“Gone? He went ahead to the Fire Nation without us? What ship did he take? We can probably still catch up-”</p><p>“He didn’t go to the Fire Nation.” Hakoda sighs, rubbing a hand into his temple. “He went…” The man waves a tired hand in the direction of the open tundra. “He went hunting. He’s…Katara, I think he’s going to be gone for awhile.”</p><p>Not understanding, Katara shakes her head. “No. No, he can’t be out there alone. Not right now. Not after this. It’s dangerous even for an experienced hunter who’s emotionally stable. He can’t be out there. No!”</p><p>“Your brother <em>is </em>an experienced hunter,” Gran-Gran reminds her granddaughter grimly. “And he wants to be alone.”</p><p>“I’m not going to <em>leave </em>him out there-”</p><p>“Yes, you are.” Gran-Gran’s voice is cold and hard as winter ice. She sighs. “Go to the Fire Nation. It sounds like your friend needs you.”</p><p>And so they leave, just the two of them, small and alone on Appa’s back. Katara sends hawks from the imperial palace every day, asking after Sokka. It’s three weeks before she gets a response.</p><p>_</p><p>Out in the tundra, the air is freezing cold. Sokka stays in the abandoned cave of a polar bear. It’s bad form. They sometimes return to their old caves, the mother bears. Sokka catches himself hoping that the animal who shaped the den makes her way back and finds him there. He wants the chance to fight the bear, to fight and kill a definite enemy.</p><p>Half the time he imagines killing the bear – a bloody affair, long, drawn-out, violent.</p><p>The other half of the time, he imagines that the bear wins.</p><p>_</p><p>Sokka’s never much cared that he can’t bend. Sure, it’d be cool. Useful in a fight? Always. But he was born without powers, so he’ll train with a boomerang and a sword and a spear and be the best non-bender he can be. Simple as that.</p><p>Now, he wants the power to shake the earth, to blast the snow into the air, to spin the very air into a force of rage. He wants to shoot fire from his fists. He wants to breathe it out of that aching place in his chest. The howling empty.</p><p>He remembers the shows of grief he’s seen from the benders in his life. The way Katara calved a glacier over some minor inconvenience. Zuko twisting lightning to his will. Toph raising and lowering mountains on a whim.</p><p>And Aang, that time in the Earth Kingdom, when that little earth lord had sunk Katara into the ground. When Appa had been kidnapped. When his eyes and arrow went white, and his rage could obliterate anything, anything.</p><p>Sokka wants <em>that. </em>He’s hungry for that kind of power. To make the very elements take the shape of his loss. She deserves that. He still can’t say her name, can’t even think it. But she deserves that remembrance. The fierce, funny, indomitable, brave, badass woman he loved. Loves. Sokka can’t <em>breathe </em>with the pain of it. The fury he feels, the thick, choking, noxious grief. He wants to make something of it. He desperately wants it to mean something.</p><p>Instead he sits motionless on the tundra, full and empty as a stone.</p><p>_</p><p>When Sokka returns from the tundra, he hauls with him otter-penguins, turtle-seals, and tiger-seals, the fierce ones, the males. Boys from his tribe are taught from a young age never to take those seals on alone. Hakoda’s mouth hardens into a line, but he says nothing. Not when Sokka, the jokester, the talker, the charismatic diplomat, remains utterly silent over dinner. Not when, instead of staying with Gran-Gran, or even his father, he walks back to his abandoned home, alone. Not when his hood slips off his head, as he’s walking away, and Hakoda sees that his son has shaved his head, his wolf-tail, his warrior’s pride.</p><p>Knowing that he has no words that will help, Hakoda bows his head and stays quiet.</p><p>_</p><p>A month after the attack, Sokka reaches the palace. He doesn’t tell anyone he’s coming because he doesn’t want them to know. The ship docks in the early hours of morning, an anonymous cargo carrier full of traders who don’t bother to speak to him because he doesn’t speak to them. That’s good. Sokka likes it that way. Disembarking, Sokka directs a curt nod at the captain and then heads for a quiet back entrance to the palace.</p><p>It happened here, but there’s no sign of the attack. No scorch marks, or chips in the marble stairs. From chatter that he does his best not to hear, Sokka has gathered that it happened during a transition moment, in the early morning. The Fire Lord, climbing into a carriage. Those transition points were always the most vulnerable, she had confided in him once, after a particularly harrowing attempt on Zuko’s life. She had been right. She always was.</p><p>The past tense never grew less hideous. Always left a bad taste in Sokka’s mouth.</p><p>When he’s finally done examining the scene, Sokka walks into the palace. The lack of security is laughable. She’d throw a fit if she knew.</p><p>Sokka finds Zuko in his chambers, up before even the sun, working by the light of half a dozen candles. He’s stopped at the door by a young, bullish guard, but an older companion stays the man, lets Sokka past. They know him at the palace. He used to visit all the time.</p><p>He comes in so quietly Zuko doesn’t notice him at first, and Sokka watches the Fire Lord work, head resting heavy on one hand as he writes missives with the other. His desk is inches deep in drifts of paper, and around him is a sea of tattered, discarded drafts of letters, torn up missives. The room looks a wreck. Zuko looks worse. His lips move around the words as he reads. His hand twitches as he thinks about what he’ll write. He’s as focused as Sokka has ever seen him. He looks terrible.</p><p>Zuko’s always been lithe, sometimes bordering on skinny, but now he looks gaunt. The bags under his eyes look like they’re bruising. His hair has lost the healthy sheen that Sokka used to tease him about, in a different lifetime. He looks a little sick, and bone tired.</p><p>Sokka clears his throat. When Zuko looks up without jumping or flinching or uttering a cry, Sokka realizes that the Fire Lord knew he was there all along. Was only pretending so they wouldn’t have to face each other.</p><p>They’re facing each other. So now what?</p><p>“Sokka.” Zuko’s voice sounds thin, fragile, almost frightened. When Sokka responds with a silent, formal bow, Zuko swallows visibly. “I…I didn’t know-”</p><p>“I didn’t say.”</p><p>“Oh. I’d…I’d tell the servants to prepare a room for you, but everyone’s…asleep…” Zuko looks lost, unsure of himself. Sokka hasn’t seen him this shaky since they were sixteen. It puts a dull ache in the warrior’s throat.</p><p>“I can wait.”</p><p>“You, you must be exhausted.” Zuko rubs a hand across his face. “I’ll, I can have-”</p><p>“Is she-”</p><p>For one, excruciating moment, Sokka couldn’t wait anymore, couldn’t bear it, couldn’t go one more second without seeing, without knowing. Then, of course, he finds himself unable to speak before the question’s even out. Zuko seems to know what he means, though, and the Fire Lord’s face twists. He looks tortured.</p><p>“We had to…we couldn’t wait…the funeral…” Zuko can’t form a sentence, but the words still give their meaning. Sokka had forgotten how thing were here, where the air was warm and bodies grew soft, corrupt. Grief was quick and brutal here, a raw wound forced to scab before the flies could settle. Up north, grief endured. Tears froze just as surely as blood. Change left a mark, a clear, open cut where ice split. No grass grew to cover it, to soften the face of loss.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Sokka.” Zuko’s face is tight with pain. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry we couldn’t wait. I’m sorry-”</p><p>“Don’t.” Sokka shakes his head, weary of talking, of thinking, of the way Zuko draws back, stung, at his dismissal. “I…you’re right. I should rest.”</p><p>“Stay-stay here,” Zuko suggests awkwardly, looking fearful even as he says it. “Stay in, in my chambers. There are no other rooms ready and…” He swallows again. It looks painful. “I, um, I don’t want you to be alone.”</p><p>Sokka nods slowly. It’s hitting him at once, all over again, the simple, inescapable, terrible fact of her absence. He is here and she isn’t. From now on, it will always be this way, in every place that he goes. His presence, her absence, like two sides of a tragic coin.</p><p>“Come to bed.” It sounds like more of an order than a suggestion, which is perhaps why Zuko looks so shocked. Sokka doesn’t care. It’s been over a month since he felt the warmth of a person beside him, and the Fire Lord needs the sleep just as much as Sokka. “I’ll only sleep if you do.”</p><p>It’s true, because without Zuko there, even just as comforting, anonymous warmth, all Sokka will be able to think about is absence.</p><p>“I…I suppose I could rest a few minutes.”</p><p>Sokka strips to his underclothes. Zuko is already in a sleeping robe as he stands and steps hesitantly toward the bed, and Sokka wonders idly, vaguely, if the Fire Lord rose from his bed or was never in it to begin with. The tangled sheets aren’t much of a clue. By the looks of the room, Zuko hasn’t let anyone in to clean it in many days.</p><p>It’s a huge bed. Fire Lord size, they used to joke, when they came to visit him, all a group, an interchangeable, interactable mass that lay on the Fire Lord’s bed and threw balled up paper at him while he worked. It had fit all five comfortably, once, with room for Zuko when he finished the reviews he had been poring over. Now, holding just Sokka and Zuko, they lie with two feet of space between them. For once, Sokka is grateful for Zuko’s overactive firebender body heat. By the glow of the living furnace next to him, he sleeps into the next day, his first uninterrupted sleep since the hawk landed on his father’s arm. He sleeps through Zuko waking up, through the hurried breakfast Zuko eats, still in bed so as not to disturb him. He sleeps through a whispered conference with Katara, and then Toph, and Aang. By all accounts, Sokka sleeps like the fucking dead.</p><p>_</p><p>Three nights and two days later, Sokka leaves. It’s Zuko’s turn to sleep the comatose sleep of the truly exhausted, and while he lies there, open-mouthed and unaware, Sokka packs his things and goes. He takes another cargo ship out of the harbor. He’ll send a hawk when it next makes port. He stands on deck, watching Caldera City disappear, until the land is finally gone from view. Only then does Sokka retreat belowdecks.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. and i will still be with you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: a little bit of drinking to cope, death &amp; grief</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>23</em>
</p><p>It’s been two years since Sokka called any one place home. Two long years of traveling, wandering, searching for meaning. When he thinks about it, he feels like a cliché, but he supposes clichés have to get their start somewhere. They have to at first be effective, before everyone starts doing them.</p><p>When his hair is finally long enough to tie up in a wolf-tail, even a small one, Sokka knows that it’s time to go home.</p><p>He gives no warning, continues sending letters as if he’s still somewhere in the Earth Kingdom. Sokka has found that he likes being unexpected, likes the shock and happiness and lack of fanfare because no one had time to plan anything for him. He comes in on a trading ship, his new favorite way to travel. It’s a quick trip, just a few days, but by the time he’s climbing off the vessel in the South Pole, he’s made a few good friends. They’re Northern Tribe, mostly young, and they don’t recognize his name, which is even better. He offers to help unload, but they tell him to go ahead, find his family. They make plans to go fishing sometime soon. Grinning, Sokka heads off, hoping they’ll keep those plans when they realize who he is. Chief’s son. Avatar’s friend. Once, briefly, the official ambassador of the Southern Water Tribe.</p><p>Now he’s just Sokka, and he relishes the feeling of walking into the village with no weight on his shoulders. He’s been gone for years; they can’t really expect anything of him now.</p><p>He knows he should go right to Gran-Gran’s, and then Hakoda’s, but he keeps getting waylaid by well-meaning friends who are ecstatic to have him back. The boys he’s trained, the mothers who helped raise him – by the time he makes it to the center of the village, the crowd has swollen to over a dozen, which even for their growing tribe, is still a lot. He’s laughing, talking a mile a minute, trying to work his way through the chattering mob, when he hears her.</p><p>“<em>Sokka?”</em></p><p>He hadn’t realized Katara was home. Last he’d heard, she was visiting one of the Air Temples with Aang – but she’s right there, staring at him, blue eyes swimming with tears. The fish she was carrying is scattered on the ground. “Katara-”</p><p>That’s all he manages before she’s storming up to him and slapping him across the face. Even then, he can’t help grinning. The padded bearskin mitten doesn’t hurt much anyway, and then her arms are around his waist, hugging him so tight he can’t breathe. “Sokka! You are the <em>worst, </em>most <em>inconsiderate, </em>most <em>stubborn, </em>most, most, most-”</p><p>“Hey, Katara.” He murmurs it into her hair, pulling her close enough to squish her wet cheeks against his chest. “I missed you too.”</p><p>_</p><p>When his family gets over their shock, they’re overjoyed to see Sokka. Overjoyed, and, in the case of Katara, still a little irritated. Hakoda calls her off, after a few pointed remarks. “He needed time,” he tells his daughter, and Sokka nods, because it’s true. “Time and space.”</p><p>They’ve just finished dinner, and <em>man, </em>Sokka has missed South Pole food. Everything in the Fire Nation is so spicy, and the Earth Kingdom under-salts their meat. This, the briny taste of the polar sea, is what he’s been missing for years. He digs in, and when he’s groaning over how he can’t possibly eat another bite, Gran-Gran presses a cup of tea into his hand. It’s time for them to ask him about his journey.</p><p>“How was it?” Sokka takes a second to marvel at Aang – somewhere in the two years that he was gone, the little monk stopped being, well, little. He’s taller even than Sokka now, lanky. His face has finally lost the baby roundness. It probably started sooner, before Sokka left, but after two years, the change is marked.</p><p>“It was good. It was really, really good.” Sokka smiles around at his family. He’s seeing them all newly after two years of being gone. Gran-Gran looks relieved, still. She hasn’t gotten over the fact that he’s back. Hakoda looks proud of the man that has returned, in place of the furious, miserable, broken boy who left. Katara’s eyes are shining because somehow, there are even more tears she hasn’t yet shed. And Aang, true to form, just looks really, really happy.</p><p>“I traveled around the Fire Nation for awhile. Learned a lot about breathing. Practiced fighting – Piandao took me back on, can you believe that? Then I went to the Earth Kingdom. Visited Kyoshi Island. Suki’s parents were there, that was…” Sokka sighs. “Hard. But good. Really good. And then, um, I spent the past few months visiting each of the Air Temples.”</p><p>“Really?” Aang’s eyes are shining.</p><p>“Yeah. They’re really cool, Aang.”</p><p>“How’d you get into them?” Aang’s brow furrows. “Like…any of them?”</p><p>Smirking, Sokka shakes his head. “A magician never reveals his tricks.”</p><p>“It sounds like an important trip,” Hakoda says, and Sokka nods, the smile turning into something more serious, more thoughtful.</p><p>“Yeah. I…I don’t know. I was pretty messed up when I left. I’m sorry I didn’t…say anything.”</p><p>“It’s all right,” Gran-Gran tells him quietly.</p><p>Katara crosses her arms. “Well, it’s not <em>really </em>all right, but…” When her eyes land on her brother again, she softens. “All right.”</p><p>“What about the others?” Aang asks. “Did you see Toph? Zuko?”</p><p>“I actually did run into Toph a couple times.” Sokka shakes his head. “Never on purpose – it was weird, I could never tell if she was trying to find me or not.”</p><p>“Well, the rest of us sure were,” Katara reminds him. “We were so worried, Sokka. For so long.”</p><p>“I wrote!” It’s a weak protest. “I just…felt like I needed to be alone for a while.”</p><p>“Well, you’ve been alone. Congratulations! Now you’re done.” Katara says it firmly, but there’s warmth sparkling in her eyes, and when Sokka smiles at her, she smiles back.</p><p>There’s a brief, comfortable quiet as they all sip from their steaming mugs of tea. Aang’s the one who breaks it. “You should really see Zuko, though.”</p><p>Sokka doesn’t know how to interpret the pained expression that crosses Katara’s face, the worry in Hakoda’s brow. “Yeah,” his sister agrees after a moment. “You should really see Zuko.”</p><p>“Of course I will,” Sokka assures them. He’s still smiling. How could he not be? He’s happy, he’s with his family, he’s <em>home. </em>“I’m going to stay with you guys a while though, first.”</p><p>Everyone smiles at that.</p><p>_</p><p>When his ship makes port in the capitol city, Sokka considers, for a moment, hanging around a few days and exploring. It’s one of the few places that, in his two-year trek, he could never bring himself to visit. He could take a day, see the sights, buy some trinkets, and surprise Zuko in his chambers again in the morning. Try to scare him, this time. Sokka smiles, a little sadly, a little fondly, at the memory of the two of them, shattered and wretched and lying together in that gigantic bed.</p><p>The sun is too high in the sky to surprise Zuko in his chambers, and Sokka decides he can’t wait another minute to see the Fire Lord again. He saunters through town, charms a fire peach off a vendor near the marketplace, and walks through the streets grinning, juice running down his jaw with every bite. When he gets to the palace, his hands are still sticky, and he pauses before he walks up to the main entrance. Without thinking about it too much, he veers right, and his feet carry him to the back of the palace, those same unforgettable marble steps. He takes a second to breathe in the cool, shadowed air. To remember the curve of a smile, a flash of brown eyes, small, quick hands and a smile that carried through the air like music.</p><p>Then Sokka breathes out and continues up the stairs.</p><p>_</p><p>Zuko is definitely being weird. He keeps standing up from his throne, and then sitting down, and then standing up again. It’s a little bit funny to watch, but Sokka also feels bad that the poor guy is so nervous. He wishes Zuko would come over here and hug him, but he lingers near the throne, looking almost frightened. Maybe he’s just on edge. A few minutes ago, he almost jumped out of his skin when he saw Sokka again, and then apologized profusely for…nothing. Now he’s frantically summoning a servant to prepare quarters for the visiting warrior.</p><p>“Don’t do <em>that.” </em>Sokka rolls his eyes at the frazzled Fire Lord. “I’ll sleep in your room. It’ll be like old times.”</p><p>“You…will?”</p><p>“Sure!” Sokka gives him a little half-smile. “We have a lot to catch up on.”</p><p>“R-right. Well, um…” Zuko bites his lip, seemingly at a loss. “The thing is, I have a council meeting this afternoon. It’s about, um, some Earth Kingdom towns that are claiming allegiance to the Fire Nation <em>still, </em>but we think it’s just to dodge taxes-”</p><p>“Don’t worry about it, Fire Lord.” Sokka waves a dismissive hand. “I’ll wander around town or something. Go to your meeting. Can I find you for dinner?”</p><p>“Y-yeah,” Zuko stumbles, “yeah, of course, we can, um, we can have something in your honor.”</p><p>“Tui and La.” Sokka laughs. “Please don’t have something in my <em>honor. </em>I’d love to just have dinner with you, and your uncle, maybe, if he’s around. I don’t care about whatever Earth Kingdom dignitaries are here harassing you.”</p><p>“Okay.” Zuko nods, all too eager to please. “Okay, we can do that.”</p><p>“Great.” Sokka waits a second, then rolls his eyes. “Come here, Zuko. At least let me give you a hug.”</p><p>“Oh. Oh, yeah, of course.”</p><p>One of the first things Zuko did as Fire Lord was redesigning the throne room. Out with the platform, the leaping flames, the shadowy room. The new throne is a simple stone chair at the end of an intricate, black and red carpet. It isn’t even raised above the rest of the room.</p><p>So why does it take Zuko so long to stand, cross to Sokka, and put his arms around him?</p><p>_</p><p>The Fire Lord is late to dinner, but that’s okay, because Sokka has always liked Uncle Iroh. Who <em>doesn’t </em>like Uncle Iroh? The servants are laughing as they guide him back to the table for the third time, because he keeps trying to carry their dirty dishes back himself, and the lead server, a tall, muscular woman, has to come out and tell him, with mock sternness in her voice, that if he keeps it up, he’s going to put them all out of a job.</p><p>“Have I ever told you,” Iroh starts, as he sits back down again, “that when I retire, I’m going to open a tea shop?”</p><p><em>Only about a hundred times, </em>Sokka thinks, grinning to himself, but no way is he going to shut the old man down. “You know, I don’t think you’ve mentioned that before.” They both know Sokka’s lying, but Uncle Iroh launches into a description anyway, talking about location and new blends and the nice daughter of the lead server, who he’ll hire to pour tea.</p><p>About halfway through the familiar daydream, Zuko stumbles through the door.</p><p>“Sorry – sorry.” He looks harried, exhausted. “The meeting ran long – the Earth Kingdom ambassadors got angry. I’m sorry, Uncle. I’m sorry, Sokka.” He includes a little formal bow, and Sokka <em>has </em>to roll his eyes.</p><p>“No worries,” he excuses Zuko easily, slapping the empty seat next to him at the table. “Come sit!”</p><p>Zuko does, and his tentative smile just about melts Sokka’s heart. He’s missed Zuko. Man, he’s missed Zuko. It’s been years since the days of angry, insecure outbursts. All his rough edges have finally been worn soft. The real sweetness underneath is showing through, and Sokka is so happy. All he can do is smile fit to burst at his nervous, lip-biting friend.</p><p>Because Zuko’s still visibly nervous. Probably he’s just feeling awkward because he hasn’t seen Sokka in so long. He keeps quiet, and picks at his food, and swallows sake far too easily when the servants pour it into his glass. Amused, Sokka ribs him about the unhealthiness of the habit, and it’s worth it to see the flush in Zuko’s cheeks.</p><p>After dinner, Uncle Iroh recites some pretext about being a tired old man and excuses himself to his chambers. Fondly, Sokka watches him go, and when he turns back to Zuko, catches the Fire Lord draining the last of his third glass of sake.</p><p>“Whoa, buddy.” He no longer thinks the flush in Zuko’s cheeks is just incurable awkwardness. “What are you doing?”</p><p>Swallowing hard, Zuko hunches his shoulders. “Sorry.”</p><p>“Stressful day?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“C’mon.” Sokka stands, stretching his arms all the way up over his head and enjoying the way his shoulders pop. “You can tell me about it back in your room. I’m sure there’s somewhere comfortable for us to sit.”</p><p>Nodding, Zuko stands and leads Sokka away from the table. He’s so quiet. Sokka frowns. “You look good,” he tells the Fire Lord’s back, seeing the exact moment the words hit, because Zuko stiffens. The guy’s still no good at taking compliments.</p><p>“You…you look good, too.” The words are muffled because Zuko is facing away from him, and Sokka rolls his eyes affectionately.</p><p>“How can you tell when you aren’t looking at me?”</p><p>Zuko sighs. He stops, turns, and his eyes move over Sokka’s face. Seemingly unconsciously, he bites his lip as he looks. “You look good.” With that, he spins and continues down the hall, faster now. Behind him, Sokka frowns. He’s ignored it as long as he reasonably can. There’s definitely something up with Zuko.</p><p>_</p><p>“Okay, what’s wrong?” They’re back in Zuko’s chambers, and Sokka’s thrown himself down in a chair near the fire. Zuko is moving around the room in jerky, pointless circles. By the looks of it, he’s just trying to find something to do with his hands. At Sokka’s question, he hunches his shoulders, and Sokka can’t help wondering why the hell he’s so defensive.</p><p>When he speaks, the Fire Lord’s voice comes out low, raspy. “I just had a stressful day.” Zuko clears his throat. “And, um, probably too much sake. At dinner.”</p><p>Patiently, Sokka waits for Zuko to keep talking, but he stays quiet as he moves around the room, not doing much of anything except moving for the sake of moving. Rolling his eyes, Sokka prompts him again. “So? What was stressful?”</p><p>“Just – meetings.” The words are clipped as they leave Zuko’s mouth. “It’s stupid. It’s not important.”</p><p>“It’s important if it’s upsetting you.”</p><p>“It’s not upsetting me, it’s just stupid.”</p><p>“Okay, well then why are you upset?”</p><p>“I’m not upset!”</p><p>“Zuko!” Sokka is on his feet, facing his friend, and finally Zuko stops and looks at Sokka with the frightened gaze of a cornered animal. “Cut it out, man. Sit down and tell me what’s going on. Please.”</p><p>Slowly, Zuko sinks down on his bed, leaving a good five feet of space between himself and Sokka when there’s a <em>perfectly </em>good chair right nearby. For now, Sokka doesn’t push it, doesn’t approach or ask why. The Fire Lord is clearly freaking out about something. Taking a deep breath, Sokka tries again, his voice calm and level again. “I’m sorry I yelled. Now, can you please tell me what’s going on with you? You’ve been tense and upset since I got here.” A thought occurs to Sokka, and he swallows. “Do-do you want me to go? Am I upsetting you?”</p><p>“<em>No!” </em>The sound wrenches out of Zuko, and both of them look surprised by its ferocity. Zuko’s staring at Sokka with this wild, desperate look in his eye, and his chest is moving up and down so fast Sokka thinks he might be hyperventilating.</p><p>“Zuko, hey, hey, calm down, Zuko, what’s wrong?”</p><p>The Fire Lord buries his head in his hands and cries.</p><p>The sounds of sobbing and the movement of his shoulders is unmistakable, but Sokka is so stunned it takes him a moment to respond. Once he understands, once he processes, he moves without even thinking about it to Zuko’s side. The Fire Lord stiffens when he feels Sokka’s weight on the bed next to him, and Sokka wants to reach out and hug him <em>so badly, </em>but for now, he holds himself back. “Zuko.” He says it gently, and still the firebender flinches at the sound of his name. “Zuko, can you please tell me what’s wrong?”</p><p>Zuko shakes his head. “No. No. No, it’s stupid, don’t make me say it, it’s, I can’t-”</p><p>He’s babbling, and Sokka lets out a quiet sigh. This could be a long night. Carefully, Sokka reaches out and rests a hand on Zuko’s shoulder. The Fire Lord goes still but for the trembling that’s working its way through him. “Zuko. I’m really worried about you right now, okay? I want to help you, but I don’t understand what’s going on. Can you please tell me what’s going on? If it’s someone else you need, I can go get them, but I’m not just going to ignore it, or leave you alone when you’re like this.”</p><p>Somewhere along the way a pleading note enters Sokka’s voice, because Zuko is <em>shaking, </em>and Sokka is so confused, and so worried, and so desperate to do something, anything to help. A long moment of quiet passes between them.</p><p>“I just…” Zuko heaves in a shuddering breath. “I just…aren’t you…mad at me?”</p><p>Sokka blinks. “What?”</p><p>“I…I keep thinking you must be mad at me, and I keep waiting for you to yell at me, and you, you don’t, and I’m just…I’m just waiting, I-I don’t get it.”</p><p><em>“Mad </em>at you?” Sokka shakes his head, incredulous. “Why would I be <em>mad </em>at you, I, I haven’t even seen you in <em>two years.”</em></p><p>“That’s…” Zuko gulps in another quick breath of air. “That would be…why. Because of what happened. Because it was…it was my fault. Because of Suki.”</p><p>Mouth falling open, Sokka just stares at Zuko, who looks back at him, teary, miserable. “Zuko.” Sokka breathes it out, watches Zuko’s face crumple all over again. “Oh, Zuko, oh man, no. Never. I would never, I never…”</p><p>He shakes his head. The words aren’t enough. Zuko’s crying, and Sokka can’t stand it anymore. He reaches out and pulls Zuko into his chest, into a tight, desperate hug. He just wants Zuko to stop crying, stop shaking, stop looking so utterly devastated. “It’s not your fault, Zuko.” He squeezes the firebender tight. “Please, <em>please </em>tell me you haven’t spent the past two years thinking that what happened was your fault.”</p><p>Zuko shrugs, face downturned so Sokka can’t see his expression. Squeezing his eyes shut, Sokka shakes his head, as though pretending it isn’t real will make it less true. “Zuko, I swear. I’ve never thought that about you. Never.”</p><p>“How could you not?” Zuko’s voice is a bare, tortured whisper. “It’s true.”</p><p>“<em>Zuko!” </em>The firebender flinches when Sokka growls it, so Sokka just squeezes him tighter, and after a long, tense moment, Zuko relaxes, goes boneless in Sokka’s arms. He sags against his friend, and Sokka just holds him for a while, trying to find the words. “Zuko.”</p><p>Sniffling, Zuko looks up at Sokka, and his golden eyes are swimming in tears, and with the emotions and the sake and the crying, Sokka just doesn’t think they can have a productive conversation tonight. He sighs. “We’re going to talk about this tomorrow, okay?”</p><p>Zuko flinches.</p><p>“I’m not mad at you.” Sokka keeps his voice low and soothing as he stands, guides Zuko to his feet, and leads him toward the bed. “We’re going to get some rest, and we’ll talk about this in the morning.”</p><p>Swallowing hard, Zuko nods, still tense and miserable, and Sokka wonders, a little desperately, if there’s anything he can say that will make Zuko believe that he’s not angry, he doesn’t blame Zuko, that this whole mess is decidedly <em>not </em>the Fire Lord’s fault.</p><p>Sokka likes to think he’s good with words – he’s a diplomat, a charmer, pretty suave if he does say so himself. But when words fail, he’s always going to resort to touch. So when Zuko lies down, still shivering, still teary, Sokka lies down right next to him, and wraps his arms around the firebender. Finally, finally, Zuko lets out a shaky breath, and the heaving sobs quiet, and then disappear. Seemingly unconsciously, he nestles back against Sokka, and Sokka pulls him in, trying to ignore the aching in the back of his throat. “There you go,” he tells Zuko softly. “You’re okay.”</p><p>The Fire Lord makes some small noise, hopefully agreeing, and in the space of a few minutes, the two are asleep.</p><p>_</p><p>Sokka had wanted <em>so badly </em>to wake up before Zuko, but when he opens his eyes the Fire Lord is awake, dressed, and pacing the room nervously, pretending to read some missive. Sokka can tell that he’s pretending, because about every other second, he’s shooting glances at Sokka, and he’s clinging to the scroll in his hands as if for dear life. Internally, Sokka heaves a hell of a sigh. He can just tell that they’re in for a long morning.</p><p>No point in pretending to be asleep anymore – the tension in Zuko’s shoulders says that he’s noticed the change in Sokka’s breathing.  Zuko knows that he’s awake, and Sokka knows that Zuko knows, and on down the rabbit hole, possible forever. They’re so tuned into each other, even after years apart. Sokka marvels at that. Maybe it comes from being on the run together. Maybe it’s something else. Whatever it is, Zuko doesn’t need to speak for Sokka to read him like a book.</p><p>“C’mere.” Sokka doesn’t bother to sit up, because the bed is so <em>warm, </em>and there’s nothing he can’t say lying down. “Let’s talk.”</p><p>Sucking in a huge breath, Zuko nods. He sits beside Sokka, and the Water Tribe warrior can <em>feel </em>his friend’s body thrumming with nervous tension. Sokka opens his mouth to speak, but suddenly Zuko’s cutting him off. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry about last night. I got nervous. I-I…just got nervous. I shouldn’t have gotten so <em>drunk.” </em>Zuko sounds disgusted with himself, and the frantic babble just keeps coming. “I…I’m sorry Sokka, I don’t know how I can make it up to you, but-”</p><p>Unable to stand it anymore, Sokka interrupts. “No-o-o, no, c’mon.” Sokka flaps a hand in the Fire Lord’s direction. Zuko goes quiet and still and looks anxious again and Sokka’s just <em>sick of it. </em>“Stop apologizing. Stop…” he sighs. “I know this isn’t really fair to ask, but just…it’s you and me, dude. It’s…I’m still just me. Can we try to talk to each other as friends? Can…can you try to talk to me like you’re not scared of me?”</p><p>Hunching his shoulders, Zuko nods. “Sorry.”</p><p>“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” Reluctantly, Sokka hauls himself into a sitting position. This isn’t a conversation they can have lying down. “Look, you…said some stuff last night. Do you…” he clears his throat, suddenly finding it hard to speak. “Do you actually think that it’s…<em>your </em>fault what happened? Do you think I blame you? That I’m mad at you?”</p><p>Eyes dropping to his lap, Zuko shrugs leadenly in a way that means <em>yes. </em>Sokka sighs. “What…what can I say to make you believe that’s not true?”</p><p>Looking pained, Zuko rubs the back of his neck. “It’s really not a big deal. I was drunk and upset; I…I wish you wouldn’t take it so seriously.”</p><p>“Zuko. Talk to me, please.”</p><p>“Sokka, it’s fine. I’m telling you, it’s fine.”</p><p>“It isn’t fine, and I’m not going to drop it, so you’d better start talking.”</p><p>Looking over at him, Zuko sees that Sokka’s serious. He heaves another sigh. “Okay. Fine.” He scrubs his hands over his face. “Yeah, I thought you were mad at me. I…I still think you were mad at me. Maybe not anymore, but…” He shakes his head. “I didn’t see you for <em>two years. </em>You left in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. Your family got letters, Aang got letters, you ran into Toph a few times, and I got…nothing.”</p><p>When Zuko says it like that, it starts to make sense, Sokka thinks guiltily. But the Fire Lord isn’t done.</p><p>“It’s okay. Honestly, it is. I was upset too, for a long time. And I blamed myself. And if you’ve forgiven me, that’s great.” Sokka tries to interrupt, but Zuko keeps talking, faster now. “I’m, I want to be friends again. I want things to get back to the way they were. But it’s not my <em>fault-” </em>his voice breaks, and he has to suck in a quick, shuddery breath, “-it’s not my fault for thinking you were mad when that’s how you treated me.”</p><p>Nodding, Sokka lets out a slow breath. Zuko watches him nervously, chewing on his lip. “You’re right.” Sokka offers Zuko a small, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. You’re completely right.” He pauses. “Not about me being mad at you! Or, or thinking it was your fault. You’re wrong about that. But I didn’t treat you fairly. I’m really, <em>really </em>sorry about that.”</p><p>Zuko’s mouth twists. “Okay.”</p><p>“Okay, what?”</p><p>“I just…” Zuko huffs, and there’s a flicker of relief in Sokka. He much prefers irritated Zuko to crying Zuko. “If you weren’t mad at me, why’d you…why’d you act like that?”</p><p>So, the moment of truth has come sooner rather than later. Sokka takes a deep breath and starts with the easy stuff. “Part of it was just that it was hard being here without Suki.”</p><p>It’s the first time either of them have said her name, and as much as Sokka doesn’t want it to be a big deal, it is. They’re quiet for a second.</p><p>“It was hard being here without her, harder than I expected, and…I mean <em>I </em>felt guilty, <em>I </em>felt responsible. I was angry with myself for not being here. And honestly, I was angry at her.” Sokka shrugs. “I…I really missed her. I was upset she took such a dangerous job and upset that it eventually cost her…you know, her life.” Now he looks up, right into Zuko’s eyes. “I was never mad at you. I promise. I swear.”</p><p>“How could you not be?” Zuko demands, eyes narrowed. “I was furious with myself.”</p><p>Sokka shakes his head. “It’s not your fault there were people trying to kill you. Suki offered to be part of your personal guard. Fighting for you was part of the job.” He raises his eyebrows at the floor. “Dying for you, even. Was part of the job.” Zuko swallows. “And I know you did everything you could to try to save her.”</p><p>“I did.” Zuko’s voice is pained, raw.</p><p>They sit for a moment in the quiet, but it feels more comfortable now, more companionable. Zuko’s accepted his explanation. Sokka could leave it there.</p><p>But if he learned anything on his two-year trek around the world, it’s that there are some things you can’t run away from.</p><p>“There’s something else.” He says it to the floor because he’s a coward. “It…it was especially hard with you for…for other reasons.” He swallows, shuts his eyes, and when he opens them, forces himself to look at Zuko. His friend Zuko, Fire Lord Zuko, the ferocious, sarcastic, overprotective secret-softie he’s loved since he was sixteen. “Being around you, without Suki…I just…” He grits his teeth, scolds himself fiercely, and pushes on. “I felt guilty about how I…felt about you.”</p><p>Eyebrows knitting in confusion, Zuko just looks at him. “How’d you feel about me?”</p><p>Tui and La, Zuko’s going to make him say it. First, Sokka lets out what has to be his hundredth huge dramatic sigh, because he thinks he’s earned it. Then he makes himself say the words he’s been rehearsing since the Western Air Temple. “I, um. I’ve had, you know. Feelings. For you. For, um, for a while now.”</p><p>Zuko’s eyes are wide as a startled cat-deer. Sokka takes a deep breath and plunges onward.</p><p>“When Suki was alive it was just this, this harmless little crush, you know? And then, when she died, I just felt…” Sokka lifts his shoulders and lets them fall. “I felt like a piece of shit, ‘cause my fiancée had just died, and I’m still thinking about somebody else.”</p><p>“I, um.” Zuko gulps. “I didn’t know that.”</p><p>Sokka’s cheeks heat. “Yeah, well, it’s not a big deal or anything. I just, I really like you, you know?” He offers Zuko a smile and sees the Fire Lord go pink. “It took me a long time to be okay with it. After Suki died, it just felt like I shouldn’t be thinking about anyone else, maybe ever. But I was.” It’s a full-on smile at Zuko now, but the Fire Lord won’t meet his eyes, and Sokka feels his heart sink. “Look, we, um, we’re still friends. I mean, you’re one of my closest friends. It doesn’t need to be…weird because of this. I, um, I really hope it isn’t.”</p><p>Zuko clears his throat a few times, like he’s trying to say something, but can’t. Desperate to explain himself, to make everything normal again, Sokka keeps talking, filling the air with pointless noise. “I, you know, I didn’t think you could have feelings for two people at once. I thought something was wrong with me. There were these monks, though – did you know there are still monks? They aren’t airbenders, but they, um, they have some of the same ideas, and they just talked to me a lot about, you know, love, and the heart, and, um, and spirits. And it turns out you can be in love with a lot of people at once. And it doesn’t mean that you love any of them any less.”</p><p>Zuko makes this funny choking sound, and Sokka stops talking. After a minute, Zuko manages a few words. “In…in love? You’re…you’re in <em>love </em>with me?”</p><p>Sokka’s heart has sunk so far so fast he’s not sure it’s still in his chest. But he’s going to be honest. Especially now. It’s not like he has anything to lose. “Yeah.” He chuckles a little, humorlessly. “Yeah, I am. I think I’ve been halfway in love with you since we were sixteen.”</p><p>“Oh.” Zuko’s voice sounds way too high, and Sokka can’t take this anymore. He has this stinging feeling in the back of his eyes and he’s really afraid he might cry, so he stands abruptly, and waves his hand toward the door.</p><p>“I, um. I’m just going to go, for now, and-”</p><p>“Don’t!”</p><p>Zuko’s hand is on his wrist. His hands are always so, so warm. Sokka waits, just breathing. Behind him, Zuko starts to laugh.</p><p>It’s Sokka’s turn to get annoyed. “Hey, dude, what the hell?” He’s glad the tears are gone, so he can turn and put his hands on his hips and glare. The Fire Lord shakes his head, holding his stomach, laughing too hard to speak. “What’s so funny?”</p><p>Zuko still can’t speak, and incredibly, Sokka feels a smile on his own lips. He doesn’t know why it’s funny – it was hard for him to say, and now Zuko’s laughing at him, but he can’t help it. The Fire Lord is almost in <em>tears, </em>he’s <em>cackling, </em>he’s tipping back to lie flat on the bed, and he looks ridiculous, so yeah, Sokka laughs too, until they’re both sprawled across the bed, laughing hysterically. Finally, Zuko has regained enough breath to speak. “<em>Dammit, </em>Suki.” He sits up, swiping tears from his eyes, and shakes his head. “Dammit.” He looks skyward, shakes his head again. “Damn.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“She…she knew, didn’t she? That you…had a crush?”</p><p>“Yeah. Yeah, she did.”</p><p>“I…she knew about mine, too.”</p><p>Sokka sits up fast and stares at Zuko. “Your…your what?”</p><p>It’s Zuko’s turn to be bashful, turn his eyes toward his lap. “I, um. I mean. You, just.” He clears his throat, almost painfully. “I like you. Too, I mean.”</p><p>For a moment there’s no movement in the room, in the world. Everything is still. Then there’s this leaping rushing feeling inside Sokka, and he’s smiling too hard to even look at Zuko right now. “Oh. Oh man. Oh. Fucking <em>Suki.”</em></p><p>“She’s laughing at us right now. From the spirit world.”</p><p>Sokka shakes his head. “She’s having the time of her fucking life.”</p><p>“Do you think she would’ve told us? About…” Zuko flaps his hand for effect. “About each other?”</p><p>“Oh, yeah. I’m sure. She was probably waiting for the right time. I mean, how long did she know? About, um, you?”</p><p>Zuko smiles at the ceiling, at the memory. “I told her a few weeks before, um, before she died. She knew for months though. You know? I only told her at the end but she’d known for a long time.”</p><p>“Oh yeah,” Sokka nods. “She was like that.”</p><p>Then there’s another companionable pause, except this time there’s something hanging in the air, an uncertainty, a question. “I’m not, um, ready.” Sokka feels like he has to say it, even though he’s really just confessed years long love for this guy. “If that’s what you’re thinking! I mean, maybe you don’t want to…maybe you just want to be friends…” Sokka’s fumbling, and his cheeks are bright red. He goes still and quiet when Zuko takes his hand.</p><p>“I, um. I do want to.”</p><p>“Oh.” Another swallow from Sokka. “Well, I’m, I’m not ready yet.”</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>“But…but maybe in a little while. If you give me some time, I can-”</p><p>“Sokka.” He looks up and meets Zuko’s eyes, and for once he’s blushing and the Fire Lord is not. “I can wait.”</p><p>_</p><p>So it turns out maybe they can’t read each other as well as Sokka thought after all. But they will have time, he thinks, watching Zuko laugh at Uncle across the breakfast table. Yes, even after Yue, after Suki, after everything, Sokka looks at this love and chooses to believe that yes, they will, yes, they’ll have time.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. when we find a new love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>26</em>
</p><p>Kyoshi Island is not an easy place to reach. The journey from Caldera City means a week at sea, and after living on a ship for basically the entirety of his three-year banishment period, Zuko prefers to avoid the open ocean at all costs.  This time, of course, he makes an exception.</p><p>Aang had happily offered them use of Appa, who would certainly shorten the trip, but Sokka and Zuko want to go alone, and Appa tends to get fractious without the airbender around. Besides, with new baby Bumi, Katara has her hands full. It’s not exactly a good time for Aang or Appa to go jetting off on an international adventure. Then, of course, Zuko’s advisors weigh in, insisting on a security detail and attendants and the whole entourage, which Zuko eventually, wearily agrees to. At the last minute, not giving his advisors any time to protest he whittles the party size down as far as he can, but it’s still more than the ideal. The ideal, Sokka reminds him over and over, is just the two of them, but as it turns out, they aren’t teenagers anymore.</p><p>It was such a <em>mistake, </em>Sokka moans, growing up.</p><p>So onto a ship it is. It’s a faster craft than the lumbering iron beasts that make up the Fire Nation navy, and Sokka has to admit that he likes the way the deck pitches and changes under his feet. It’s exciting, being out on the open sea again, feeling salt air in his face and watching the prow dip and dive over whitecapped waves.</p><p>The excitement is <em>not </em>worth the way his boyfriend thrashes and cries in his sleep. Sokka wakes horribly to the sound of gasping sobs, and then there’s nothing to do but roll over in bed and hold Zuko and try to rouse him gently. It never works – the firebender always jolts awake, breath coming hard and short, fast and frightened, and it takes long minutes to settle his sobs. It’s not every night, but it’s enough. Zuko has a lot of bad memories that come along with being at sea. They have a lot of late nights, and neither man gets enough sleep.</p><p>Even with the long mornings of trying to make up for lost sleep, the hours of the journey drag on. During the day, Zuko spends some hours trying to teach himself pai sho, because even the friggin’ Fire Lord can’t join the White Lotus without being a master. When he’s bored of squinting and cursing at dry, dense tomes of game theory, Sokka can usually goad him into a few rounds of sparring, and that takes up some of the endless hours.</p><p>The problem is once they’re done sparring, Sokka is bored out of his skull. As Fire Lord, Zuko always has reports to be reading or letters and resolutions to be drafting. As a part-time ambassador and full-time boyfriend, Sokka has far fewer duties and a lot of…<em>other </em>ideas on his mind. About half the time, he can get Zuko on board with a careful innuendo or even just a suggestive look. They’re still young, and it’s not like Zuko’s in the mood for it at night. The other half of the time, though, Sokka’s left with nothing to do but plot another distraction. Thankfully, it’s something he’s adept at. He distracts the sailors at their duties, the captain at the helm, and the cook in the kitchen. A few slightly burned dinners are worth the friendship, Sokka feels certain, and although Zuko rolls his eyes when Sokka drags him to the soldier’s card games, he goes along without complaining. Initially, the sailors are hesitant to play cards with the Fire Lord himself, but after a few stilted rounds, he’s revealed as just another young guy who curses with the best of them when Sokka whips out another killer hand. Sokka is so good at cards that one night he catches Zuko checking to see if he has literal aces up his sleeves.</p><p>As the days pass and the island draws closer, the mood aboard the ship changes. Zuko takes to pausing between letters and assignments, staring thoughtfully toward the horizon where the island will soon appear. Sometimes a smile plays around his lips, sometimes he stands there biting the inside of his cheek and trying not to cry. Often, Sokka will join him, and the two of them will stand at the ship’s rail without moving, just taking comfort in knowing that the other is there.</p><p>They’ve each visited separately, in the years since Suki’s death. They’re both known and loved around Kyoshi. They visit and send donations and plenty of letters to Suki’s mom. She’s always happy to hear about their lives, about the capital, about the memorial statue they’re erecting for her daughter. She knows them well, and still they’re nervous. This will be the first time that the two men visit together. Together, of course, in more ways than one.</p><p>It had been a long process. There had been miscommunications, and tears, and false starts. But Zuko had been understanding, he had been patient, he had been kind. He had waited, just like he said. And now, three years later, just looking across the deck at the Fire Lord as he frowns at some message is enough to make Sokka’s heart swell to bursting inside his chest. It’s incredible how resilient a heart is. How it can be broken and torn out and utterly destroyed, and still, after the dust has settled, find the strength to go and love someone again. On hard and hurting days, he thinks it’s foolish. On days like this, he thinks it brave.</p><p>_</p><p>When traveling with the Fire Lord and an entourage of security, it’s hard to give no warning of your arrival. The landing party that departs from the ship is greeted by a parade of Kyoshi warriors. Seemingly the whole town has turned out to celebrate, and Sokka has to fight not to roll his eyes at the fanfare.</p><p>Their first stop has to be the school. Established in Suki’s honor, it takes girls from all over the Earth Kingdom and trains them in the ways of the Kyoshi warriors. There have even been talks – contentious ones, but still talks – about opening the training program up to girls from the other nations. Judging by the piles of flowers young girls still leave by the statue on the back steps, Sokka thinks there will be plenty of Fire Nation applicants.</p><p>It leaves a particular lump in his throat, touring the facilities and hearing the administrators boast about grades and scores and high self-esteem. The traditional makeup of all the older warriors is exactly the same, even if the facial structure isn’t. In every fresh-faced, smiling teen, Sokka can’t help but see the girl he met on that first field trip with the Avatar. The girl who kicked his ass and tied him to a tree, back when there were trees sprouting out of the middle of the roads here. Now, things are paved over. Now, this island is something approaching civilized. Still, Suki is everywhere. He sees her in the faces of the young warriors, the constant flashing of green silk, the way her mother smiles when she sees Sokka and Zuko walking up to her front door.</p><p>When they go inside for lunch, Zuko dismisses the security entourage. Here, of all places, they aren’t worried about safety. Before her daughter donned the robes, Suki’s mother was a Kyoshi warrior herself, and she still has her fans on the wall. Not to mention, the entire island is populated with people who would gladly lay down their life for the Fire Lord and for Sokka. Not everywhere in the Earth Kingdom is like this, but then again, not everywhere in the Earth Kingdom believed in the boy king enough to let their daughters give their lives for him.  </p><p>Suki’s mother feeds them and fusses over them and only fights back tears a few times, when they talk about the memorial in Caldera City, or how the girl that took over for Suki is pregnant now. She smiles even through the tears, tells them it’s wonderful, it’s all so wonderful. And it is. It’s wonderful, and still it hurts.</p><p>Sokka keeps trying to start the conversation and the words keep dying in his throat. He doesn’t think that Suki’s mother will react poorly, but still. He was supposed to marry her daughter, and here he is with another man. With his boyfriend. Who also happens to be the Fire Lord. Who her daughter died to protect.</p><p>Why can’t anything ever be simple?</p><p>But then Zuko is telling some story about Sokka showing up in his sweaty training clothes and outthinking a snooty Ba Sing Se dignitary, and Suki’s mother is laughing, and Zuko is looking at Sokka so fondly, and the Fire Lord reaches out and takes Sokka’s hand easily, naturally, like it’s nothing, because usually, it is. Suki’s mother sees it, while Zuko is still chattering away, and the smile she sends Sokka’s way warms his cheeks.</p><p>So maybe they don’t need to talk about it. So maybe some things are simple, after all.</p><p>_</p><p>After dinner, they go out alone to the cliff behind the house. Suki’s mother watches them go, and then turns back inside to give them privacy. The path is lined with white shells from the beach, and it winds up the hill to where the land drops away into the sea. It’s a promontory that roughly faces the Fire Nation, behind the house where Suki grew up. Her mother had moved to a smaller place near the center of town, but when they brought the body in, she’d come back here, to be with Suki.</p><p>The nations had different ways of dealing with death. In the Water Tribe, they sent their dead out to sea in kayaks carved from ice, filled with fur and bone carvings and letters from their families. In the Fire Nation they burned their loved ones and scatter the ashes somewhere they used to love. The Air Nomads likely had some long-forgotten tradition that Aang can explain to them all someday. And the Earth Kingdom dwellers, they buried their dead.</p><p>It’s a little sad, all this talk of funerals, but Sokka has made Zuko tell him the story half a hundred times, because he wasn’t here to see it. They put her in a box full of dirt, and then they sailed her to Kyoshi. The warriors came in all their colors, and an old man sang, and they laid flowers on the mound where they’d covered the box in earth. A simple round-top stone marks the place where she now lay below their feet. It sats her name, her birthday, and the day she’d died. Reaching out, Sokka runs his fingers over the characters. Zuko puts his arm around him.</p><p>“It’s weird, you know? That she’s like, right here.”</p><p>Zuko nods. “I kind of like it. Having a place. It’s very specific. I think I can…feel her here, you know?”</p><p>“Yeah.” Sokka bites his lip. “I…I don’t know. I like giving people to the water. I like thinking that wherever there’s water, their spirits can reach. But…but this is okay, too.” He manages a small smile at Zuko. “I like feeling her here.”</p><p><em>I like having you here. </em>He doesn’t say it out loud, but it’s in the air between them. It’s good having someone here, someone who remembers Suki like he does. Between the two of them and their stories, sometimes they can almost bring her to life, feel her smiling in between them, about to take a breath and speak. Sokka savors that daydream.</p><p>They sit in the grass by the stone, and Sokka leans up against it, while Zuko leans up against him. “I still miss her, you know,” he tells the marble, and Zuko nods into Sokka’s side. “I still miss her all the time. Like, the other day I was reading some stupid message from some Earth Kingdom noble, none of whom, by the way, take me seriously, and I could just…could just <em>hear </em>her making fun of how pretentious he was being.”</p><p>Vehemently, Zuko nods. “She did the best impressions of people at court, did you know that? She gave really good advice, too. She…” his voice dies in his throat. He takes a breath and tries again. “She was my <em>best friend.”</em></p><p>Sometimes, Sokka thinks about spending all day, every day, with a person, for five years, and then watching them die for you. Sometimes he thinks that his pain pales in comparison to Zuko’s loss. On his wiser days, he knows there is no sense in comparing pain.</p><p>“I’m dating this guy, you know.” Sokka says it conversationally, directs it at the stone, and when he glances at Zuko, the Fire Lord’s cheeks have gone red, but the firebender doesn’t protest. It makes sense, in a weird, lopsided, sad sort of way. They should tell Suki, even if the only way to tell her is speaking to a stone. “We’ve been dating for like two years. You probably saw it coming ages before we did.” He smiles down at Zuko and brushes the hair back from his boyfriend’s golden eyes. “We’re very happy. I think that would make you happy.”</p><p>“I love him.” Zuko’s voice is quiet and sincere as he looks in Sokka’s eyes, and Sokka’s heart skips at the words. Zuko has this incredible talent of making it feel like the first time each and every time he says those three little words, even though the reality is that he and Sokka can’t <em>stop </em>saying them. They repeat it back and forth to each other, like a promise, like a prayer, like two people who have lost someone and know how very fragile time is.</p><p>“I love him, too,” Sokka murmurs, looking from Zuko to Suki’s grave. “Very much.” Carefully, he pulls the betrothal necklace from his pocket. For the past five years, it’s hung in Zuko’s chambers, on the back wall of a corner closet where Sokka and Zuko go sit on the worst days. It’s where Suki hung her spare uniforms, but time and dust have done their work, and the fading cloth no longer smells even a little bit like her.  When they decided to visit Kyoshi Island together for the first time, Sokka went to the closet and took down the necklace. It’s been in his pocket ever since; a reminder, a weight. Now he lays it on the ground in front of the grave.</p><p>“It’ll get buried,” Zuko protests. Sokka shrugs.</p><p>“She’s a part of the earth now. It can be a part of the earth, too.”</p><p>There’s a pause, and together they listen to the waves crash against the cliff below. “You don’t…” Zuko’s voice fades into uncertainty. “You don’t have to give it up. Give…her up. I, you can keep it, and I won’t take it to mean-”</p><p>“I’m not giving anything up, Zuko.” Sokka wraps an arm around his boyfriend’s shoulders. “She’s always going to be with me. With us. But this is hers, and I think it’s past time to give it back.”</p><p>“Mmm.” Zuko leans into Sokka, and Sokka leans against the stone. There is another betrothal necklace in his pocket. It’s the Fire Nation crest, carved in whalebone. Sokka can think of no better place, no better time, to ask the question that’s been burning in him for what feels like forever. The sun is setting in the distance, bleeding out over the water, and the sight from the cliff is absolutely beautiful. Sokka thinks that he’ll wait, just a little while, maybe until the stars come out and the moon shows its face. It will be tonight. Sometime tonight. And Zuko will say yes. He’ll say yes, Sokka <em>thinks. </em>And then, sometime soon, forever will start again.</p><p>Because he knows how short forever can be, Sokka decides that it can stay just a little bit longer. He holds Zuko close, watches the sun sink into the western sea, and he waits. He has time. What a beautiful, unlikely, unpredictable thing. To have time.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please let me know what you think! <br/>Also the chapter titles are from a song I love, and should be read in order. The stanza goes "and fuck all the nostalgia, and everything we're scared of, and i will still be with you, when we find a new love." Very good song and very beautiful lyrics (Fuck It And Whatever by the Eco Friendly).<br/>Okay, I'm just babbling now. Hope you enjoyed! Leave an idea for my next fic please, here or on my tumblr! :)</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Ideas for my next fic, or want to talk about this one? I am on tumblr at overcomewithlongingfora-girl and I would LOVE to talk to you :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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